COMPOSITIONS AND THERMO-CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF BOVINE AND CAPRINE BONES

Studies have been carried out on bovine bone due to its abundance and large quantity of hydroxyapatite (HAP) in it while caprine bone has been understudied. In this study, locally sourced bovine and caprine bones were washed in distilled water, defatted at 120°C for 1.5 hr in a pressure pot, ball-milled, sieved to 150 µm particle size and characterised. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Energy dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDS) analysis revealed calcium, phosphorus and carbon as the main components. Both bones contained carbon and oxygen due to the presence of organic collagen but the quantity in caprine bone was a bit higher as revealed by the Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and EDS spectra. A slight difference in thermal decomposition patterns was recorded while X-Ray diffraction analysis (XRD) revealed the presence of identical functional phases. The microstructures showed needle-like and pebble-like shapes for bovine and caprine respectively, also on visual examination of the Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM), the bovine samples tended to have particle surface roughness more than caprine. Consequently, the chemical properties of both bone raw samples were insignificantly different from each other except for collagen composition and morphology.